Marketing, advertising & media intelligence

Peruse enough mainstream news sites and you're likely to eventually see the Getty Images label tagged to the photography featuring on some of the stories. This is because the company today serves as an image provider for many publications throughout the world. Due to this affiliation with news, it's important for Getty to provide imagery that accompanies current affairs suitably.

Rather than developing capabilities from the ground up, acquisitions provide an effective means by which companies can incorporate new skills into their offerings. This has been seen internationally in purchases by the likes of Google and Facebook. But this trend is by no means exclusive to the residents of Silicon Valley. On this side of the world, Bauer Media, Designworks and Accenture have all recently acquired businesses to consolidate their offerings.

With cricket excitement reaching an all-time high in New Zealand, plenty of commercial parasites are trying to make hay while the sun shines (top prize goes to Calendar Girls for its classic plane-based ambush advertising at Eden Park). Even golf is getting in on the act, with Lydia Ko and Israel Dagg reuniting to drum up interest in the sport—and support for the Black Caps.

With the proliferation of subscription video on demand services, some have started to suggest that the traditional paid-for TV model will come crashing down. However, in its interim report for the first half of 2015, Sky included an interesting graph that illustrates why the service might stick around for quite some time.

Whether they're fast-walkers or slow-walkers (Simon Pegg's preferred option), zombies will stop at nothing to get at braaaaiiiinnnnnnsssss. And, in this German Audi ad promoting its reliable—and reliably expensive—servicing options, dodgy mechanics will stop at nothing to get your business.

Author, creative and eccentric innovator Jimi Hunt founded depression charity Live More Awesome to try to give other sufferers of depression the help he didn’t feel he had received. And while he says it has been hard to find large brands willing to be linked to the charity, that's starting to change, with Spark Foundation and the ZM radio network recently coming on board as sponsors and Samsung releasing a clip via Augusto showing Hunt putting its Galaxy Note 4 to good use. PLUS: get your tickets to the next edition of the World's Biggest Waterslide.

In the lead up to the release of Netflix on 24 March, Vodafone has become the exclusive communications launch partner for the company in New Zealand and is trumpeting the arrival via a promotion that will give Vodafone subscribers on one of the available 24-month Red+ mobile plans six months' access to the subscription video on-demand (SVOD) platform.

Late last year, Meridian shifted its advertising account to Barnes Catmur after a four-ish year relationship with Assignment. And the new couple have released their first ad to promote its moving house offer—with Jeremy Wells reprising his role as the entertaining spokeshuman and becoming a very literal embodiment of the brand.

Auckland Museum has launched a weekly Twitter game to engage its followers and educate people about its collections, and Te Papa, Waikato Museum and The Nelson Provincial Museum are getting involved too.

As the t-shirt says, Jono and Ben at Ten is like Hamish and Andy for people who hate Australians. Now the band of merry pranksters has been moved up the Friday night batting order from a half-hour slot at 10pm to an hour slot at 7.30pm. And they've celebrated the promotion with a clip showing some of the Facebook feedback that decision has generated.

Technology was meant to make life so much easier. Paperless offices. Cheap communication tools. And, of course, robot vacuum cleaners. But instead we're lonelier, more stressed and getting our hair eaten by our electronic assistants. Woman's Day has noticed this shift as well, so, as part of a big—and quite rare—$1.5 million campaign via FCB, it's foisted a Zsa-Zsa Gabor-esque character upon the nation in an effort to give its readers permission to take a break without feeling guilty about it.

As a quintessential challenger brand, independent, family owned oil company Gull has tried a few things to get noticed, from themed toilets, to aggressive pricing (and criticism of the pricing structure of its national competition), to road rage reduction tools to docking wages of staff for customer theft. And, in an effort to draw attention to its biofuel, Gull Force 10, it worked with Contagion to create an edible billboard as part of its sponsorship of the Splore music festival.

A couple of years ago, Lion and Shine attempted to modernise the Speight's brand and launched a campaign featuring a nice Kiwi chap swimming against a tide of rudeness in New York. At the time, some felt it was a bit too close to Steinlager territory, but the sentiment of the Southern man was there in the tagline ‘knowing what matters since 1876'. Now the brand has gone back to its heartland territory with a big new campaign via DDB that focuses on the idea of mateship.

Why we like it: Bauer spent $1.5 million in a bid to convince women to take a bit of time for themselves via a delightfully insane series of spots that feature a Zsa-Zsa Gabor-esque character giving advice on how to go about disconnecting from the stresses of life. This campaign also gets bonus points for the bravery it takes to be one of few to feature the word 'die' in its catchphrase.

Who it's for: Meridian by Barnes, Catmur and Friends

Why we like it: Jeremy Wells has a jawline so sharp that he could possibly use it to slice through a watermelon with ease. This aesthetic feature when combined with his consistent ability to make Kiwis crack up—whether on the radio, a Herald-based political series or the Alternative Commentary Collective stream—makes him a great spokesperson for the energy company—and it's thus no surprise that Barnes, Catmur & Friends kept him onboard after taking over the account from Assignment Group in October last year.

Who it's for: Speight's by DDB and Good Oil Films

Why we like: Repurposing the fable of the Little Red Hen into a blokey modern tale, DDB's new spot for Speight's plays on the friendship that often accompanies a few bottles of beer. And the spot definitely gets extra kudos for silly butt-crack jokes, the cat man and the slide-out barbecue.